Thursday, April 17, 2014

Tevye is an A-Hole

Look, I realize that this, like many of my opinions, places me in the firm minority, but someone's gotta be the one to come out and say it. And I'm not really out to convince anyone; this is mostly because I'm a lazy bastard who never posts anything, so my friends made me get back on track, and this is the first thing that came out.

Anyway. Tevye's an asshole.

I am speaking of the main character in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. I'm not actually that big into musical theatre, but I had this, uh... discussion... with my wife Sarah recently and I figured it was random enough to warrant a blog post. It's a show I've seen maybe two or three times in my life, so, hell, that makes me an expert.

For those who don't know or remember the show, I will summarize. Tevye is a Jewish dairy farmer in rural Russia in 1905. It's a traditional town and he's a traditional guy. He is BFFs with tradition. He has three five daughters, named A, B, C, D and E. A, B and C are of marriageable age; D and E are in fact extraneous characters who are only causally connected to the plot by virtue of being the device that introduces one of the Suitors (see below) to the family.

In short, each daughter chooses a husband more audacious than the last, stretching poor Tevye's ability to cope with cultural change. It's 1905 in Russia, after all, and many new things are afoot. Tsarist pogroms, urban Marxist youths and so on. Soon after the show begins, Tevye arranges for daughter A to be married to the wealthy Suitor 1, who is in fact named Lazar Wolf, and I mention him by name only because his name is so badass. Dr. Wolf-Laser is even older than Tevye, however, so A naturally falls in love with Suitor 2 who is much closer to her own age. A explains this to Tevye and although he is initially shocked, he agrees that Love Is Actually Kinda Okay and gives her his blessing. The engagement to Captain Wolfenhammer is called off.

During this time, daughter B has been busy falling in love with Suitor 3, who is a new-fangled Marxist. Stuff happens, and he soon has to head to Kiev to join the revolution. B and 3 inform Tevye that they are engaged, and -- you may want to grab the smelling salts for this -- they have decided this themselves, without asking for his consent. Tevye pisses and moans some more, and I think there may be some sort of song, but eventually he counters by giving them his consent anyway. Ha! Anyway, Suitor 3 is shortly captured and sent to Siberia, so B follows him there to hang out and whatnot.

Now, daughter C. She has been secretly dating Suitor 4 for a while now, who was introduced by being the tutor for daughters D and E, and the problem with him is he's not Jewish. Remember, Tevye totally loves tradition. C petitions him for permission to marry 4. So now, finally, Tevye has found a line he can't cross; he thinks on this for a while but simply can't bring himself to consent to a marriage outside of the faith. He orders C to stop talking to 4, which as all parents know is certain to work. Shockingly, C elopes with 4 anyway. Tevye wails and gnashes his teeth, wondering how it all came to this, but -- get this -- when C comes back to try to reason with him, he still rejects her. Apparently all the soul-searching didn't help him much. And actually, "reject" is not a strong enough word; he shuns her. Says she's dead to him, and to the rest of the family.

The rest of the play is mostly wrapping up the loose ends. They have to leave their village because of the pogroms so some of the kids are heading to Krakow while Tevye and the missus are making plans to head to America. There is some scene near the end where Tevye finally brings himself to mumble a prayer -- through his wife -- to the daughter, which we are to take as evidence that he's an Okay Guy After All, but... wait, what? Jews are being ethnically cleansed in his homeland, and he has to leave everyone and everything he knows, and this is the thing he's hung up about? What the hell, man?

That's Tevye's line, and frankly, this is mine. I felt this way before I had kids, but now my opinion on this matter is only stronger: your kids are the people in the world who need you the most. They trust you more than anyone. If you, as a parent, have just one goddamn job, it's to be good to your kids. You are there for them when they need you, even if it gets in the way of one of your hissy fits. You don't go against the family. Ever.

Look, my kid could kill a guy. He could kill a dozen people and wander into my house with the murder weapon still dripping blood in his hand, and my reaction would go something like the following:

  1. Holy shit.
  2. Are you okay?
  3. What the hell happened?
  4. Holy shit.
  5. Okay, okay. Come on in, get cleaned up and sit down. I'll put some tea on. Tell me what happened.
  6. You should probably turn yourself in. I'll go with you and I'll be with you the whole time.
  7. No? Okay. Go hide in the basement while I talk to the cops. Then we're driving to Mexico.
  8. Oh, and text Mom.
"But Mark," you may be saying (as Sarah was), "remember? Tevye was a staunch traditionalist. This was foreshadowed the whole time. Everyone has a breaking point and this was his." And you know what? I agree. None of this is in dispute. In fact, this is exactly what makes him an asshole. Some people are assholes because they lack empathy, some because of an unfortunate upbringing or whatever, and Tevye is an asshole because he values his religion more than his kids.

I also don't buy the argument that I should evaluate this in its historical context. Or rather, I already am. First, the whole thing about tradition is that it doesn't change, right? What makes tradition tradition is that it's largely the same across centuries. Someone who shuns his kids today is an asshole, just like Tevye is in 1905, just like some other theoretical asshole in 1505. And I doubt very much his daughter was the only kid marrying outside the faith at that time, and while it's reasonable to assume that while some parents reacted as Tevye did, others were a little more chill about the whole thing. Like maybe, "Hey, I'm not super-in-favor of this, but I guess you're not ethnically cleansing anyone, so let's just say we're cool." Or even a simple, "I strongly disapprove but at least I won't pretend you're dead" would have been okay.

That's really what gets me. I don't expect the guy to approve, but don't get all pouty and just pretend your daughter isn't there. Way to be the big man, Tevye.

So that's where I'm coming from. If your ideology, whether it's religion or politics or whatever, requires you to betray the trust of the people who need you most, you should get a new ideology. And stop being an asshole.

Anyway, I apologize for the rant, but frankly it's what I do best, so there you go. It's not even something I feel all that strongly about -- I'm sure I'll forget I even wrote this in a week or two -- but I had to write something, and this was it. And honestly, the fact that I wrote about such a random and spurious topic might actually prompt me to post more often here, now that I've effectively lowered the bar for admissible material. Like a hero.

Friday, July 5, 2013

The Floor Giveth, and the Naming Conventions of the Monied Classes

I lost my computer but got a new floor instead.

Wait, let me back up.  In April I switched jobs and lost access to the sweet laptop I've had for a few years, which somewhat accounts for my lack of blogging activity lately.  Then, this last weekend, the wife and I ripped up the living room carpet so as to put down laminate in its place, only we discovered a worn but beautiful hardwood maple floor underneath it.  Now, I live in North Minneapolis, and my house is old.  I don't mean 1950s old, or even 1920s old, as so many in the city are; rather, we're talking 1890s or possibly earlier.  Like there are still square nails holding parts of the house together.  Seriously, square nails.  I'm holding out hopes that they were made by an actual blacksmith but I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath.  Additionally, my wife Sarah has seen (in some city office, I think) maps of this part of the city from before the City of Minneapolis even annexed it, in the 1880s or 1890s, and the house was already here.  Totally alone, probably a farmhouse, but here nonetheless.  So, old.

And it's not a cool old, in most cases.  With age of course comes endearing quirks, like a bedroom with two doors leading into it from the same hallway, a hell-hole in the basement, and places where instead of insulation we have, say, newspaper clippings from the 1960s about someone murdering someone else with a katana (one of these three things, by the way, is made up).  The wiring is also a tangled and malevolent horror to cause any electrician to stumble for the fainting couch; by rights, the place probably should've burned down decades ago.  So you can imagine my surprise when we discovered this beautiful hardwood floor under the skanky old living room carpet.  All it required was a little tough love from a floor sander, then a few coats of poly.  Boom.

What does this have to do with my computer?  Simple: after losing Awesome Laptop, I went back to using Okay Laptop (an old iBook).  Its usual home is by the power strip next to the living room couch.  See where this is going?  We had to move the laptop in order to reeducate the living room, and as luck would have it, the place where Okay Laptop ended up happened to be on the kitchen counter, near the door.  I did not see it there and promptly knocked it clear off the counter.  I would wax poetic about watching it tumble end-over-end in seeming slow motion as I cried, "Nooooooo!" in a slow-motion voice while reaching for it in vain, but the heartbreak is too much.  I can't do it.  Suffice to say that falling from 4.5-ish feet and landing perfectly, flatly, on the screen side was... something of a no-no.  I  couldn't bring myself to turn Okay Laptop back on until later, maybe the next day, and needless to say about 75% of the screen was dizzying kaleidoscope of dark rainbow horrors, and the DVD drive made some very unhappy and slightly-alarming noises on booting up.  Okay Laptop, you will be sorely missed.  I'll have to ftp all my stuff off of your shambling zombie carcass later.

So, on to the other half of my title.  This should be shorter and less tragic.  Now, I'm not the most astute man, so I'm certain I'm not the first to observe this, but doesn't it seem like the more expensive the car, the less creative its vanity plates?  I've seen plates like "MYLEXUS" and such before and hadn't thought much about it except to roll my eyes, but today on the highway I saw a Humvee with license plates reading -- wait for it -- "HUMVEE."  I kid you not.  In this driver's defense, at least there was a Decepticons sticker on the bumper, but still.  Come on, man.  At least go for... I don't know, "BUMBLB" or... or something.  I admit, I got nothing.

Without a proper study I can't chalk this up to anything more than amusing anecdotes; for all I know, everyone is uncreative but the non-trivial cost of vanity plates in Minnesota means that only the relatively well-to-do can display their squarishness so boldly and proudly.  But it's hard for me to get inside the head of someone who just nicknames their car what it already plainly is.   The best I can figure is maybe some people are so taken with a particular brand that they can't stop themselves from stamping it on the plates in addition to wherever else it's detailed on the vehicle's backside.  Maybe they simply weren't thinking of this from other drivers' points of view, and as such they failed to anticipate the situation in which I, a passing fellow driver, notice their vehicle and think, "Oh, that's a cool car.  If only there were some way to know exactly what make and model it was so that I could go look for oh wait, it already says it right there on the goddamn car, right next to the plates, which also say it."  I don't know.

That's not to say there are no creative plates out there.  I recently saw a car (I don't even remember what kind) with the plates, "OOMKIN."  Damn near sprayed soda all over the inside of my windshield when I saw that.  For those who don't know, this is a World of Warcraft druid joke.  To the driver, if ever you see this: well played, sir.  I have respect for the Balance spec, and although I played my druid as a feral, I imagine "HELLOCRITTY" is too long to fit on a license plate.  Alas.

Oh, about the actual books and stuff: book two in the Conspirator Saga, Soul-Killer Virangaza, is written and is in the editing process as we speak.  I may or may not get much work done on book three in the next month or two while I scout out a new laptop, so I'll probably blog more instead.  Huzzah!  The most capable computer still in my possession is an old iMac in the basement.  Nice machine, even after all these years, but just thinking about the keyboard makes me wake up in a cold sweat some nights.  And writing chapter notes on my phone is enough to make me want to punch a kitten, so the time commitment for blogging is about all I can muster.  This is for the best.  Think of the kittens!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Review and Giveaway

Gaele at I Am, Indeed has just reviewed Champion Zeon on her blog, and is giving away two ebook copies for free.  Huzzah!  The review entry is here.  If you want to go directly to the raffle, this is the direct link, though I encourage you to check out Gaele's blog as well as she frequently has stuff like this going on.  The raffle ends at approximately midnight CDT on 25 March.



Thursday, February 21, 2013

Book Two

I thought I'd ramble briefly about the second book in the Conspirator Saga trilogy for those of you who are interested.  I'm presently about two-thirds done with the manuscript, but the writing is always the easy part; the rest depends on my editors.  If all goes well -- and quickly -- we might see a summer 2013 release for the second book, which I am tentatively titling Soul-Killer Virangaza.

I should admit that my writing speed is nothing if not inconsistent.  Generally I write in frantic bursts of activity followed by long periods of sloth and torpor.  So, ten chapters in five days to complete a story arc, then three weeks of playing osu! or World of Warcraft (anyone need a druid or paladin healer?).  Not to mention I've also taken it upon myself to write a MUD from scratch in Java.  So when I say "summer 2013," you should take that with a very large grain of salt.  Like a salt lick.

Whereas Champion Zeon was more of an action-espionage story, Soul-Killer Virangaza is going to be similar but with some tearjerker elements.  The title itself is a loose reference to two such events near the end of the book, though there will be others.  This is something I highly prefer in the books I read, and I write what I want to read, so Zeon was actually something of an oddity for me in that it had more action and fewer emotive character moments.  But all that stuff had to happen in order to put the rest of the story in context.

On an unrelated note, my story "One in a Thousand" won the sci-fi category in the 2012 short-story contests held by Fresh Ink Group.  I believe it will be viewable at some point in the near future, so keep an eye on the FIG page.

Friday, January 18, 2013

How Stuff Works

I've gotten a few questions about the mechanics in Champion Zeon, and in response I've written up a rather long-winded explanation of a number of things, most notably flash, shadow-pulse, blood rituals and the drin races.  I will keep this spoiler-free, but as a consequence some of the information herein may be incomplete, or even deliberately wrong.  Ha.

This is very, very long.  Did I mention I'm a pedantic windbag?  No?  I'm a pedantic windbag.  Read on.

The Drin Races

Sephe'drin: these guys are your basic demon.  Big, scaly and evil-looking, with horns, four arms and wings suitable for short-term flight.  Their plates and scales are usually black, dark red or dark blue, but some have random other colors as well.  There are as many sephe'drin females as males and they are just as strong, which makes it difficult for human observers to tell the sexes apart.  Incidentally, the name sephe'drin came from the word seraphim since these guys look like the classic demon answer to the usual angel archetype.  It wasn't until I had named sephe'drin that I extended the name "drin" to be the name of all demon races.

Kesh'drin: the largest of the demon races and also the least-numerous.  They have the lower bodies of spiders and the upper bodies of men and women.  Their skin is hard and chitinous and thus looks rocky, which is why the characters in the book occasionally describe them as being statue-like.  Rather than cities, they live in massive hives that look rather like anthills, and typically they're built near natural sources of heat like geysers or volcanoes.  Kesh'drin vary widely in size, from little worker drones maybe a foot across to huge bastards the size of a dump truck.  There are only a few females; they act as hive queens and almost never leave them, which means virtually all the kesh'drin out in the world are males.

Hashar'drin: tall, pale, gaunt and hairless.  They also lack eyes, and instead have dark, sunken eye sockets.  Hashar'drin have a natural affinity for shadow-pulse but are more likely to use it for craft or industry than the other drin.  However, hashar'drin also generally have quick reflexes and make excellent swordsmen as well.  They have natural heat-vision, which is a product of evolution and is one of the few shadow-pulse abilities in the world which did not come from blood rituals.  Hashar'drin are also technically mammmals, and as such the females can easily be distinguished from the males, even by a human observer.

Amal'drin: they are the shapeshifters.  Their bodies are short and wiry, and are covered in glossy scales of two or three colors.  Instead of fingers and a thumb, amal'drin have three flexible, tentacle-like digits which endow them with considerable manual dexterity.  As such, amal'drin are well-represented among Ghuluin's craft masters.  Their heads are rather strangely shaped, almost like upside-down triangles, with their chins tapering down to the level of their chests, and their eyes are completely black, with no whites.  Amal'drin females vastly outnumber the males, and the males are literally of animal intelligence, so the females keep them essentially locked up in pens like livestock when it isn't mating season.  Since romantic relationships between male and females are impossible, the concepts of love and sex in the amal'drin mind are completely distinct and separate.  This gives them (unfairly) a reputation for promiscuity, though after taking their shapeshifting ability into account, it has also given them quite the exotic reputation, which stretches even into human lands.

Saa'drin: human-shaped but with fly-like eyes which are bulbous and faceted.  Their fingers are rather bulbous as well but are still nimble.  Rather than scales, saa'drin have a leathery skin with natural camouflage patterns, and the strong ones often enhance this ability through blood rituals.  Like hashar'drin and sephe'drin (and theoretically humans), they mate in pairs for life, and although they are not mammals, the females can be distinguished from the males as though they were.  Saa'drin are gangly and flexible, and when standing naturally have something of a slouch, which makes their posture look lazy and their gait like a swagger.

The royal family.  So, they don't really have a name in the drin tongue (apart from "the royal family"), though I confess I sometimes think of them as "uber'drin," although this term will never, ever make it into the books.  Lesser drin tend to think of the royal family as creepy and clone-like since they look and act virtually the same, but the royals have a strong tradition of scholastics and philosophy so intellectually they are anything but identical.  Although they are not the only drin race with soft skin, they are the only ones with hair, and hairstyle is one of the two ways the royals distinguish themselves from each other.  The other is by their features borrowed from the lesser drin, such as sephe'drin plates or amal'drin scales; these features are not cosmetic, but are permanently part of their bodies and cannot be changed short of shapeshifting.  All of the lesser drin races have features represented among the royals, though saa'drin and kesh'drin features are exceedingly rare because, frankly, they're not as pretty, and that's something the royals care about.  And that's all I'm going to say about them for now.

Flash

Flash is one of the two "magic" systems in the Conspirator Saga, and is light-themed (whereas shadow-pulse is electricity-themed).  Flash is usable only by humans, and only by a relative few humans at that.  Almost all flash-capable humans become champions (of which there are about two thousand in the world), but some become templars or monks or shamans, etc, depending on what country they're in.  Many are flash-capable but don't even know it because they haven't encountered a champion who can test them, and although it's not impossible to teach oneself spontaneously how to use flash, it is pretty rare.

All flash effects are instantaneous to create, and none last more than a second or so.  Effects which appear to be persistent are in fact a series of short-lived effects pieced together like the frames of a film.  This is how dazzle effects work, as well as the wave-shell, which is essentially the same ability but used differently.  Thus, a wave-shell is just an instant effect which makes the user invisible, chained together with dozens of others per second to create the illusion of a persistent, fluid invisibility.

There isn't much subtlety with flash; what you see is generally what you get.  Most champions fight with visible attunements on their weapons, which allow them to slice more easily through things like armor or shadow-pulse hardening.  Different colors in a flash effect have different uses, although there are only a few and the colors are still largely interchangeable.  But, to wit: violet is the hottest but is hard to make; green is good against stone and heavy things; blue is good against metals; and red, though the easiest to make, is best at cutting through unprotected flesh.

A flare-strike is just an instant beam-like attack which burns a hole in something or (if you're Zeon or one of his friends) completely vaporizes the target on occasion.  Flare-strikes are usually used horizontally, along the path between the user and the victim, but there's nothing to say they can't be created vertically or at weird angles.

Blast-shells are just bursts of light that knock things back.  This also creates some heat as a side-effect but it's not even enough to set paper on fire.

Angry fireflies is what Zeon calls the attack that creates a multitude of red lights which zip down and into the target area.  This is useful against groups, or against defenses like the smoke shield which are built around deflecting one powerful attack at a time.

Solar fog is a rectangular or circular region of intense heat.  It won't outright kill any but weaker enemies, but it'll probably ruin your day.

A cleave-plane is actually two effects of opposite polarity.  Shortly after they're created, they attract each other and fuse into a plane-shaped effect which is searingly hot for the single instant in which it's there.  Commonly used as an area-of-effect attack against kesh'drin or sephe'drin, since they're so much taller than humans (which makes it easy to place the cleave-plane so as not to hurt any humans between them).

A starfire effect is a sphere of searing heat which explodes out from a single point, but unlike an actual explosion, there's no pressure or shock front, just heat and light.

Flickering is just an instant coordinate translation.  It requires line-of-sight and preserves momentum.

The nimbus shield is not a persistent effect, but rather something the user attempts to use against every incoming attack.  However, because it's extremely sensitive to timing, it generally only works once in a while, even for a master.  If you assume shadow-pulse effects are made up of AC-style oscillations, then the nimbus shield only works against effects in the highest or lowest possible waveform state, which is why timing is critical.  The actual flash of light from a nimbus shield is just a side effect, but that's where its name came from.

Clever readers will note that three of these abilities have strange properties with momentum: flickering, the nimbus shield and the blast-shell all work by manipulating the substratum.  The nimbus shield, for example, sort of folds the substratum inside-out for an instant (for lack of a better term), which makes a spherical, momentum-canceling barrier.  As such, these three skills can only be used by people who are extremely strong with flash.

Flash effects can also be stored in devices for later use.  This preserves the "flash effects are instant" rule because the effect doesn't start until it's triggered.  Anything a flash-user can do himself, he can also place into a device, and while Zeon and Kuganao are the only individuals in his group who can make flash devices, it is a teachable skill.  But it's teachable in the sense that quantum mechanics or assembly language are also "teachable."

Zeon's resonator is a flash device, of course.  Think of the resonator as a signal repeater for flash effects.  It doesn't make them stronger, just increases their range.  Zeon's resonator is large enough to make his range quite a bit longer than that of his friends.  Resonator strength is a function of its size and the purity of the materials it's made from.

Flash artificers can also make amplifiers, which don't affect the range of a flash effect but do make it stronger (or, in theory, weaker).  With one, a flash-user can make stronger effects than he could otherwise, but only up to a point; anything stronger than that and the amplifier is likely to incinerate the user.  Amplifiers are therefore seldom studied or used, but their strength does follow the same rules as for resonators regarding size and the purity of materials.

Some flash devices can be reused.  The rules are a bit hazy, but in general anything which creates an effect, such as a flare-strike, can only be used once (even if it doesn't destroy the device holding it), but something which modifies an existing effect, such as an amplifier or resonator, can be reused.

Shadow-pulse

Unlike flash, shadow-pulse is almost infinitely versatile and can do just about anything.  But while it's very good as a tool, it's less useful as a weapon, because in order to, say, attack something with fire, you first create the shadow-pulse effect, which in turn makes fire as a secondary effect, and the fire, not the shadow-pulse itself, is what burns your foe.  So there's an efficiency loss.  But despite that, it's still very powerful and the drin often use it as a weapon.

Also unlike flash, shadow-pulse effects can last for hours or even years, given enough strength.  Most often this is used in the creation of lights or heating (or the semi-permanent fire on a Blood Lord's sword).

With the exception of rare anatomical abilities like hashar'drin heat-vision or amal'drin shapeshifting, all shadow-pulse skills are fixed abilities the user acquired via blood ritual (more on rituals below).  If you are a drin officer given a vial of ritual blood by your superior as a reward for exceptional service, you can use that blood however you wish.  Generally you would use it to confer upon yourself an ability like "set guys on fire" or "let me use a smoke shield."  The power of these abilities can vary, but stronger abilities can't be used as often as they are wearying to the mind of the user.  You could therefore use the blood to "make me super-fast for like ten seconds," and you could perhaps use that ability once every few days.  Alternately you could give yourself a much smaller but permanent boost to your speed, or power, or toughness or what have you.  This is how Blood Lords have gotten as strong as they are now, but since the benefits accrue so slowly, it's not practical for anyone who doesn't have a huge supply of ritual blood at his disposal.

Note that the above are all fixed abilities; learning shadow-pulse in this fashion does not allow you to perform arbitrary, open-ended tasks with it.  Shadow-pulse users who want to do that, such as craft masters or high-ranking drin warriors, can use each vial of blood to build what is referred to colloquially as "utility."

Utility is nothing more than the ability to use shadow-pulse as a physical force, such as to lift or move things, or to heat things up.  But with these bulding blocks and sufficient power, a shadow-pulse master can do amazing things.  All shadow-pulse healing, domination and crafting are built on utility, as well as tricks which, while useful, would be difficult to obtain via fixed ability, such as making effects to eavesdrop or communicate over long distances.  Projections (illusions) are another common task for utility masters.  It's even possible to use utility to create damaging attacks, but utility is so expensive to acquire (in terms of blood) that you'd be much better off acquiring a fixed ability to do the same thing.  Utility can be, however, used to fashion mental attacks, and this is complicated enough that it cannot be learned as a fixed skill.

Just as with flash, wielders of shadow-pulse can create devices which use it.  Unlike flash, however, most shadow-pulse artifacts burn out after a single use, though if there is a mechanism by which the device can draw power from its environment, it might use that power to re-trigger itself.  A common example of this is the vials which store and preserve ritual blood; the act of corking the receptacle creates heat through friction, and the heat is just enough to re-initialize the latent preservation effect within.  There are drin craft-masters who have become quite wealthy just from crafting vials for blood.  It's a valuable skill, as improperly-preserved blood can drive people mad if they use it.

Apart from blood vials, perhaps the best-known shadow-pulse artifact is the bloodgem.  Bloodgems are crafted from high-quality ezgaram gems, which can only be found in a few places in Ghuluin.  Ezgaram gems have a unique property which allows them to store entire utility effects inside, to be activated when the gem is shattered.  The most common uses for bloodgems are for projections (to carry on a long-distance conversation) and travel, though a craft master can put just about any effect into a gem... for the right price.

Most importantly, the effect stored in a bloodgem is rendered instantly, even if it took quite some time to prepare when the gem was originally crafted.  Because of this, some effects literally cannot be used unless invoked from a bloodgem; a prime example would be for instant travel, as the work to create the effect can take as long as an hour, and you really don't want to be transported somewhere if it means you're going to spend an hour being disintegrated or floating in the substratum.  Not to mention that even this couldn't be done by one person alone, as starting to prepare the effect would incapacitate you and thus render you unable to finish it; if you were fortunate, this would merely kill you.

Blood Rituals

Blood rituals work on sacrifice.  They're a way of sacrificing of oneself or one's domain, and condensing it into the physical medium of blood so it can be used by another (or yourself) to gain something of approximately the same "value," which is kind of a fuzzy, subjective way of putting it.  But the basic act goes something like this: I sacrifice something of myself, such as my ability to experience humor, by cutting myself and letting the blood drip into an appropriate receptacle.  Now, the blood that's in there can be used by someone else (or even me) to gain something of equal or lesser value to what I sacrificed, minus maybe 10% because the rituals aren't 100% efficient.  Bear in mind that the laws governing blood rituals, and deciding value, are fairly stupid and can be manipulated.

Most often, what is sacrificed is the victim's entire life, and this is the most potent ritual that can be performed.  Generally, when the drin take over a human town, they'll kill the men outright, then threaten the children until the women agree to sacrifice their lives via blood ritual.  Alternately, victims of both genders will simply be tortured until they agree to give up their lives via blood ritual in exchange for the mercy of death.  The war is therefore an industrial thing for the drin; they swallow up human towns and turn them into short-lived blood farms.  Note, however, that although the drin will often kill human children (what else are you going to do with them after everyone else in the town is dead?), they won't generally torture them.

A special case of blood ritual is called a suicide burst.  This is when the victim sacrifices the remainder of his life in exchange for a phenomenal but short-lived burst of speed and power, after which the ritual will kill him.  Alternately, I could use the blood from someone else's life in this same fashion and that wouldn't kill me, and there are drin who keep around extra vials of blood just in case, for this very purpose.  Suicide bursts are the shadow-pulse equivalent of suicide bombers, and are one of the leading causes of death for Blood Lords, since they're too strong to be killed outright in battle.

Blood rituals must be voluntary.  This means I can't walk up to you and cut your arm, then use that blood to gain power.  It's your blood and your power, and you're the only one who can give them away.  But "voluntary" is a pretty loose term, and even includes those who've been tortured or manipulated into it.  Blood acquired in this way is treated the same way as any other plunder: it's sent up the chain of command, at which point the commanders will use some and distribute the rest among their subordinates as rewards.  The drin have laws and customs governing how much blood must be sent up to one's master; any less than that and you'll be suspected of hoarding it and aiming for your master's position, which is likely to get you killed.  There is therefore a constant supply of ritual blood flowing up and down through the strata of drin society.

All power and abilities gained through blood rituals come through the mechanism of shadow-pulse.  Thus, contrary to what human laypeople assume, most drin cannot use shadow-pulse; generally only officers and higher will have acquired ritual blood and thus gained shadow-pulse abilities.  The exception is for special units like the Flamecore, who use explosive bursts of fire as we would use artillery.  But a corollary to this is that unlike flash, humans and drin can use shadow-pulse with equal potential.  It's just that in human lands, the sheer number of blood rituals that would be required to make someone as strong as a Blood Lord would raise some eyebrows, to say the least.

In Conclusion

I did mention I'm a windbag, right?  Anyway, feel free to post questions in the comments, or tweet me directly at @MThomasLeigh.  If your question warrants an answer longer than a sentence or two, I'll probably just make a blog entry about it.

Reminder: Champion Zeon is available here.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Welcome!

I'm M. Thomas Leigh.  Welcome to my blog.

I can't tell you exactly what to expect here, apart from the usual bloggy stuff.  I'll post material relating to my books, of course, but I'll also attempt to review books from other new authors, and you'll probably see the occasional rant or essay as well.

Please check out the Amazon listing of Champion Zeon here, and feast your eyes upon my mirror-shattering mug on my Facebook page here.